ACU students raise money, roll up sleeves to rebuild camp for inner-city kids

Posted April 13, 2010

ACU students are banding together to help rebuild and restock Camp of the Hills after recent news of a fire that effectively destroyed the non-profit, Christian summer camp serving low-income children from the urban centers of Texas and Oklahoma.

For 20 years, the nondenominational camp has served at-risk youth, bringing them the message of the Gospel and giving them a Christian community to return to each summer.

The women of GATA, a social club on ACU's campus, will collect funds to help the camp purchase the tables, chairs, commercial kitchen equipment, office furniture and supplies, and cookware that were lost when fire consumed the camp's dining hall. They also plan a weekend trip to the camp, which sits outside of Marble Falls, Texas, to help in the rebuilding efforts.

"I have seen the way this camp can change the lives of these kids," says Ally Craigie, president of GATA. "As a club, we were devastated to hear about the losses the camp suffered, and we want to do everything we can to make sure kids can keep experiencing God in this place."

Other students are responding individually to the call on the Camp of the Hills website for items such as twin-size sheets, towels, toothbrushes, toiletries, first aid supplies and clothing. The camp had maintained a supply to provide to campers, the majority of which arrived without such items, but these stores were destroyed.

Joshua Alkire, a senior from Texas, is using Facebook as a tool to help him gather donations for the camp.

"I tried to think of creative ways of gathering some of the more difficult items to collect, such as towels, first aid supplies, pillows, blankets, sheets and clothes for the younger children," says Alkire. "I want to help solve the immediate needs of Camp of the Hills. In the near future, the camp will need a lot of money to help with the cost of a new building, so any students who can make small donations, host fundraisers or contact home congregations would be serving a great cause in a very big way."

To learn more about Camp of the Hills and how to help in the rebuilding efforts, visit www.campofthehills.org.

Did You Know? ACU’sThe Optimist became the first university newspaper to publish on the Apple iPad with the recent release of an iPad app, created and maintained by a cross-departmental team of students and faculty from ACU’s Department of Journalism and Mass Communication, Department of Art and Design and School of Information Technology and Computing. Watch our video here.

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